We are the good guys.

Those five simple words can be a radical statement in America these days. Many in our own country have set out to convince us that the United States lacks the moral authority to lead the free world. And though we believe self-criticism is a vital part of democracy, we can’t lose track of the fact that we are the good guys.

President Reagan understood this fully. He was the foremost evangelist for faith in the goodness of the American people, especially when compared with the inhumanity of Marxist-Leninist regimes.

Reagan denied any moral equivalence between our two systems. To win the Cold War, Reagan knew he had to win the ideological war. He had to show that the contest with communism was not just about two different ways to organize economies, but about an existential struggle for individual freedoms against totalitarian oppression.

Today, we find ourselves in a New Cold War. One where the Chinese Communist Party aims to maximize its global power at the expense of the United States and the liberal norms that we, and our allies, have sustained for decades. As Republican presidential hopefuls take the stage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this week, they have an opportunity to channel the Great Communicator and clearly articulate to the American people not just how we win this New Cold War, but why we must win.

First, aspirants for the Republican Presidential nomination must properly frame this conflict in terms the American people can understand. President Biden may call this a strategic competition, but let’s be clear: The battle with the Chinese Communist Party is not a polite tennis match. This is a fight that will define the 21st century.

At every opportunity, the candidates should highlight the cover-ups in Wuhan, the tyranny of Xi Jinping’s Zero-Covid policy, the broken promises in Hong Kong, the forced separation of children from families in Tibet, and the concentration camps of Xinjiang.

They should highlight how the CCP does not recognize the inherent value of an individual, how it seizes the passports of its citizens, clamps down on visas for the rest of the country, silences dissenters, and even establishes police stations around the world to hunt those who have fled their borders.

To wage Reagan-style ideological warfare, Republican candidates must make sure people know the genocidal, techno-totalitarian truth about the CCP.

Secondly, the candidates should outline their specific plans to make it more difficult for the CCP to use emerging technologies to control and repress its people. Taking a page from the Reagan administration’s emphasis on blocking the transfer of sensitive technologies to the Soviet Union, the candidates should articulate a plan to block U.S. exports from supporting party-directed firms such as Huawei and SMIC, ban TikTok, and prevent American dollars from funding the CCP’s development of critical technologies like semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and more.

Finally, Republican candidates must differentiate between the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party. Just as Reagan sympathized with Soviet citizens against the system that oppressed them, the United States must make clear we have no quarrel with the people of China. Rather, we are on their side and on the side of freedom.

This means protecting Chinese Americans and Chinese dissidents living in the United States from the long arm of CCP espionage, intelligence, and police services, and making sure our country remains a haven from persecution, not a hunting ground for authoritarian regimes.

The Biden administration has taken a few constructive actions, inking new regional basing agreements and drafting important new export controls. But largely missing from the Biden administration’s strategy is the kind of ideological war that Ronald Reagan waged against the Soviet Union.